He valet parked and we went to an enormous bookstore. There, he bought me ten books.
I thought we’d walk right back to the valet but he steered me into the boutique streets and seemed perfectly fine with wandering the sidewalks on a sunny day, hand-in-hand.
I saw a particularly gorgeous outfit in a window and my heart must have leaped because his head turned to me before he walked me right in. Then he went directly to the shop assistant, told her we wanted the outfit in the window and gave her my size.
I was staring at him and I was pretty sure my mouth was hanging open when the assistant asked me, “Would you like to try it on?”
I looked at her and was about to speak when Lucien said, “No. We’ll take it.”
I watched in horror, mainly because I could see the prices on the register display, as she rung it up and it took all my willpower not to freak out.
I stood dutifully beside Lucien as he paid, the shop assistant looking at him probably like I did when he yanked off the towel and at me definitely like I was the luckiest woman in the universe.
As we walked out, Lucien carrying both my bags, I felt it important to say something.
“That wasn’t necessary.”
His hand gave mine a squeeze but he didn’t look at me.
“You’re correct, it wasn’t,” he replied.
Well, what could you say to that?
Except nothing. So I said nothing.
I was careful to moderate my heart and I did this by not looking into any more windows so that Lucien wouldn’t again go spending hundreds and hundreds (and hundreds) of dollars on one single outfit.
It didn’t matter. This happened twice more with things Lucien wanted me to have. A pair of delicate, antique, silver and coral Navajo chandelier earrings and two pairs of outrageously expensive but undeniably gorgeous, high-heeled shoes.
I tried the shoes on. Both pairs, Lucien, lounged back in a chair like he owned the joint and staring at my feet, asked me, “Do they fit?” Before I said a word, he looked at my face (which was probably rapturous, what could I say, they were great shoes) and then said to the salesperson, “We’ll take them.”
I was struggling with the supremely peculiar fact that it appeared that the Mighty Vampire Lucien, who was most definitely a male of his species, didn’t mind shopping when I noticed something.
It was the same on the street and in the shops as it had been at The Feast. People were looking at him, even some of them staring at him.
They didn’t know who he was. They only saw a tall, vital, unbelievably good-looking man who was clearly wealthy and held himself with a raw but restrained power.
They had no idea he could move faster than lightning and haul me and my fat ass around like I weighed as much as a pencil. They had no idea that, for whatever reason, he was revered by his people, a race of superhumans who lived forever.
And they’d never know.
The Mighty Vampire Lucien was walking down a sunny street but he was forced to live a secret life hiding who he really was.
Memories hit me like sledgehammers. My behavior at The Selection. My response to my first lesson, telling him the way his people fed was sick. When I was talking to Stephanie, assuming the people who went to Feasts were victims. Telling Lucien yesterday he disgusted me.
This was when I made my second mistake.
I stopped walking down the sidewalk but I did it like my body had slammed against a brick wall. Lucien kept walking for a stride but turned his head when he felt resistance from my arm. His eyes went to our linked hands then to my face. Whatever he saw made him turn to me and take a swift step back.
“Leah, sweetheart, what is it?”
My head had tilted back to look at him and for some reason I again felt like crying.
Before I could think better of it, I blurted, “You can’t be you.”
He got closer. “Pardon?”
I lifted my hand and waved it around. “Out here. You can’t be you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You,” I repeated, pointing at him. “You can move like a rocket and you can probably lift up that car and throw it across the street.” I gestured to a shiny Audi parked next to us and Lucien looked at the car then back at me. “You can, can’t you?”
“Throw a car across the street?” he asked like he thought I might be mental.
“Yes,” I answered.
“I’ve never tried,” he replied, his brows drawing together and he got even closer. “What’s this about?”
I gestured again in a vague way. “Everyone’s looking at you. They look at you and they can see you but they don’t have any clue what you are.”
His jaw got tight but I was too much in my tizzy to notice it.
Then I said, “I was a bitch and I’ve said some pretty unforgivable things and, for that, I apologize. It won’t happen again.”
His brows unknitted but they went up. I’d surprised him.
Then his gaze turned wary. “What brought that on?”
I didn’t answer him. Instead I asked my own question, “If you tried, could you throw that car across the street?”
“Leah –”
“Please answer me,” I requested softly.
He sighed before saying, “Without a doubt.”
Wow. I’d just guessed.
Holy crap.
He even made it sound like that wouldn’t be too much of an effort.
All of a sudden I wanted to know how strong he was. I wanted to know how old he was. I wanted to know how he could walk and move like a normal person and not shatter glasses in his hand or crush my bones to dust when he hugged me.
It was at this point that I was seriously lamenting my behavior in Vampire Studies.
“Would you like to tell me what this is about?” he enquired, taking me out of my astonishment.
I didn’t. But I’d started this; I had no choice but to end it.
“It seems,” I hesitated, not knowing what to say, found the word and carried on, “wrong, that you can’t be you. There aren’t a lot of people you can be you around and I’m supposed to be one of them. That thought just occurred to me and I’ve said some nasty things about you and your people. You deserved an apology so I gave you one.”
I tried to pass it off as nothing, a simple apology. I was wrong and admitted it.
It clearly didn’t come out as a simple apology.
In fact, looking into his face, which had changed again to a look I’d seen a glimpse of before, right before he slammed me against the wall at The Feast and kissed me with savage possession, that he took it as something far, far more.